


Cracks

by Martienne



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-22
Updated: 2012-10-22
Packaged: 2018-03-23 11:52:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3767158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Martienne/pseuds/Martienne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His recreation of Allison has failed again. And so he grieves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cracks

The grief has been overwhelming these last few months, like it has never been. He’s always missed her, of course, he’s always had his sleepless nights where she’s all he can think about, but at least when he got up in the morning there was usually a purpose to it. He worked hard, worked every minute he could, just to keep his mind focused on something else.

But now, he’d lost the things he worked for, one by one. His mercenaries scattered, their minds shattered, in many cases, by the pieces of him he’d intended to bring them strength. Even his efforts to clean up the mess he’d made of things had come to a disastrous close. 

He raises a weary hand to push his glasses up out of the way, just far enough for him to rub at the corners of his eyes with his fingers. “Play it again, FILSS,” he says, his voice sounding thin to his ears. This is all he has now, a memory he knows is only as strong as it is because he happened to be recording, her beautiful face and her smile, and each time it loops he tries to remember exactly how she smelled that day and what it felt like when his hand brushed against her at the small of her back, the roughness of the fabric of her jacket, how her cap bumped his forehead when he dipped his head to kiss her. 

And then the clip ends, and even a moment of quiet is too long. He plays it again and again, and he works, because now this is his work, like it never was before, because at least before he was doing this all for some other purpose besides sorting out his empty past. This is all he has left now, and he works as feverishly as he ever did, because if there was one thing he was good at it was  _work_ , just digging in and figuring out the solution;  one day he’d find the solution for this too, each failure is just another chance to get it right, and as thin a substitute these shadows of her are, that’s how thin he’s willing to spread himself to capture just a little more of her essence; his own physical deficits hardly matter now, the tremor in his hands is of little import, the hollowness at his waist and the fact that he has to tighten his belt by another notch in the morning, his lips dry and cracked and his eyes barely able to moisten when he blinks, this is nothing like torture because torture is never seeing her again, never hearing her voice again, yes he has his recording but it’s not the same, not  _really_ , because when she says his name and she laughs and tells him not to say goodbye, he knows these words were uttered thirty years ago, the smile a thirty-year-old smile, and he never said goodbye

not externally

and not internally.


End file.
